Short Abstract

Drawing on Avtar Brah's “diasporic space” and Mbembe’s “Afropolitanism”, this panel explores Africa through a decolonial lens, visibilizing Afro-centered narratives and experiences, non-hegemonic epistemologies, and transnational connections across Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe.

Long Abstract

Amidst the global rise of far-right ideologies, it has never been more urgent for social scientists to disentangle racist discourses of belonging rooted in exclusionary notions of nation-states with little porosity to social, cultural, and religious diversity. Decolonizing research, knowledge production, and everyday sense-making requires treating coloniality as a framework for uncovering unequal power structures that eclipse multiple forms of belonging in an interconnected world, shaped not only by contemporary migration flows but also by historical bonds rooted in colonialism. Yet African societies' role in this transnational cultural landscape has largely remained overlooked. Avtar Brah's “diasporic space” (1996), as an inherently intersectional site, shaped by overlapping and historically embedded relations of race, gender, class, nation, and affect, offers a scenario of continuous articulations of difference. Going one step beyond "Afropeanism" thanks to Mbembe's "Afropolitism" (2007), an Afro-diasporic lens helps amplify African voices.

This panel seeks to strengthen Afro-centered identities, narratives and experiences within this global diasporic space. We welcome proposals grounded in Subaltern Studies, Indigenous Studies, Postcolonial, and Decolonial Studies addressing:

• African and Afro-diasporic modes of being and belonging in particular contexts

• Non-hegemonic African epistemologies within this diasporic space

• Afro-diasporic cultural production

• Afro-gendered narratives of migration and diaspora

• Shared colonial pasts and African legacies connecting Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe

• Circularity of knowledges and practices, positioned knowledge creation

This panel is framed within the R+D Project Black Spain (PID2022-136282NB-I00) (2023-2027), and the European Project TrasatlatincLab (101235830) (2026-2029); pending Afrocat (SGR-Cat 2025).

This Panel has 1 pending paper proposal.
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